GP’s Sam Hryciuk plays with a lot of heart, C1
05.04.2014
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Everett, Wash.
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HeraldNet.com
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THE BIG SORT
Unions: Press Boeing on jobs
Every day, workers at a plant in Woodinville handle more than a million pounds of the stuff we throw into our recycling bins. Here’s how they do it.
A huge tax break for the 777X did not include engineering job protections. Now, unions and some lawmakers want to revisit the issue. By Dan Catchpole and Jerry Cornfield Herald Writers
See BOEING, back page, this section
SHOE SPECIALIST
An Edmonds shop sells shoes for extra-wide feet. The Good Life, D1
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Unsorted recycled items are piled up at the Cascade Recycling Center in Woodinville on March 18.
PHOTOS BY GENNA MARTIN / THE HERALD
By Bill Sheets Herald Writer
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OODINVILLE — Kasandro Eperiam has to handle dirty diapers nearly every day, and he doesn’t even have children. He also has to deal with dead animals, car batteries, barbed wire and broken Christmas lights. These are just a few of the things people toss into recycling bins that are not even remotely close to being recyclable. People on the other end have to sort it out. Eperiam is one of them, along with more than 40 other sorters at Waste Management’s Cascade Recycling Center here. One of their jobs is to pull non-recyclable items off conveyor belts that run through the plant. “We have to go in there and clean them out, at the risk of getting us injured, and at the same time it reduces the performance of the machines,” he said. “Day in, day out, you’ll see dirty diapers coming down, nonstop.” About 550 tons of material — 1.1 million pounds — are brought to the plant every weekday. The 8,200-square-foot building takes in curbside recycling from most of
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Part of Kasandro Eperiam’s job at Waste Management’s Cascade Recycling Center is to pull non-recyclable items, such as dead animals and dirty diapers, off conveyor belts.
Snohomish County, the Eastside suburbs of Seattle and parts of central Washington, said Waste Management spokeswoman Robin Freedman. The nationwide company, based in Houston, also has recycling centers in Tacoma and Spokane. Waste Management, Republic, Rubatino and Sound Disposal all pick up trash and recyclables in Snohomish County. After that,
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few people know what happens to all that trash. Machines do much of the sorting at the Waste Management plant, but the tons of bottles, cans and paper would not get to their rightful places without the people who work there, officials say. See RECYCLE, Page A10
VOL. 114, NO. 83 © 2014 THE DAILY HERALD CO.
SUNDAY
EVERETT — When Washington lawmakers rushed to extend a monster tax break to Boeing Co. for the 777X, a few argued in vain for assurances the aerospace giant wouldn’t ax engineering jobs in the process. Democratic lawmakers wanted provisions to stem the flow of billions of dollars in savings to the company if it didn’t sustain its workforce at generally the same levels through the life of the tax break. But their concerns were shelved by House and Senate leaders and by Gov. Jay Inslee, who didn’t want to risk losing thousands of jobs associated with assembling the new jetliner to another state. Now leaders of unions for the Machinists, who will get many of those jobs, and the engineers, whose ranks are getting thinned, are going to press lawmakers to take another shot at it in 2015. “We as a state did not agree to $8.7 billion worth of tax
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